


Leaving Our Home

by princessbekker



Series: Finding Our Home [1]
Category: Law & Order: SVU
Genre: Abuse, M/M, Medical Procedures, Mental Illness, Super power AU, Trauma, Violence, and runaways, they're all teenagers, you can all blame this on James this is his fault
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-11
Updated: 2019-05-26
Packaged: 2019-10-26 10:18:02
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 12,829
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17744045
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/princessbekker/pseuds/princessbekker
Summary: Mike and Peter, two gifted teenagers, decide to run away before they can have their powers exploited. But they know they can't do it alone, and soon start looking for more people like them.Updates Tuesdays





	1. Chapter 1

“You’re thinking weird.”

When Peter was about six years old, it started. He thought he was sick, although he frequently got shots and saw a doctor, but neglected to tell anyone. At the time, Pam was already in treatment for the things she heard in her own head, he remembers. Endless medications, constant appointments with psychologists and psychiatrists and other -ists he was always overwhelmed by. He remembers how frightening it had been to hear the things Pam did. To have to deal with it all the time, he can’t imagine. So he told no one about how he could hear others’ thoughts.

“That’s not unusual for me.”

Mostly those of the shy boy who lived next door, Michael Dodds. While all minds vary in clutter and readability, he has always been so easy to understand. Whereas most minds are like Jello, easy to get into with a little bit of attention and desire, Mike is like water, free flowing and almost impossible not to touch. Inside, however, he is extremely disorganized. Wild with emotions, mostly pain and fear, but plenty of guilt. Especially guilt. It all comes along with memories of the sort of things his father put him through on a day to day basis. At times, it’s overwhelming, more so than the other people he slowly begins to hear as well. 

“And that’s not what I meant. You’re hiding something from me.”

Mike was the very first person Peter told the truth to about the things he hears. In their teen years, they spent so much time together, talking through the windows of their brownstones and playing “I Spy” while Mike playfully accused him of cheating by reading his mind. It was always true because Peter didn’t know how not to. He had so little control. Not that he has much now, he thinks, but he’s getting better at controlling how much he sees. Today, however, he’s giving more effort into reading Mike than he ever has without pushing too deep, and everything is incredibly stiff and forced. There’s a barrier. He’s hiding something. 

“I’m not.”

When they were eight, Mike showed him his powers. The two of them were biking around the block when Peter hit a divot in the road and fell. Like eight year olds do, Peter burst into tears and laid there on the hot asphalt, burning his skin more on accident and crying harder. Then Mike was pulling him out of the street and sitting with him on the sidewalk with a hand on the back of Peter’s neck. His skin was cold. Slowly, the pain faded, and the scrapes knit back together. Just like that, he was listening to Mike’s thoughts and learned about how he had powers too. He wasn’t alone.

“I’m not kidding.”

There’s no answer to Peter’s prodding. Mike just focuses on pouring milk into a measuring cup. It’s his seventeenth birthday, and it’s long since been a tradition of theirs to bake him a cake. His father would never allow it if he knew, and that’s exactly why they always do it. Sometimes, he just deserves good things. 

“Do you ever think about running away?”

“You say that all the time,” Peter says, “but you never mean it. You’re underage and your father is literally the chief of police. And mine is a DA. At best, you get a slap on the wrist for running away. I don’t wanna think about worst case scenario.”

Normally, this is where Mike starts whisking in the milk while Peter cracks in the eggs, but instead he turns around and lights the burner. “No, no, I’m serious. I’ve got a bunch of money saved up that I’ve been taking from my dad’s wallet when he’s asleep. And- and- I used some connections to get us fakes.”

“Us, Mikey? And what’re you doing with the stove?”

In Mike’s thoughts, it’s mostly blank. All that remains is an image of Mike’s father towering over him, slamming a door on him. That, and a heavy intention that Peter tastes in the back of his throat like pennies. For the first time, he’s afraid of what Mike might do. He’s seen enough horror films to know how easy a stove stop can hurt someone, especially someone whose face is pressed against it by someone much stronger. And the fear is there, really there, while Peter watches Mike with wide eyes.

“I want you to come with me, is all. I’d miss you. And you have every reason to run away too.”

He finishes his details in his head, and Peter can only stand still in shock. Mike’s been listening in to conversations between their parents. When they’re out of school and no one will miss them, how they can be used to interrogate people. Mike can hurt them, Peter can read their minds. They wouldn’t be people anymore, they’d be tools. And they’d never truly get to live, as if their childhoods haven’t been taken from them already.

With how distracted he is, Peter doesn’t notice why Mike turned the stove on until the thoughts flare with pain and he pays attention in the real world to see Mike holding his fingertips to the burner. The air turns acrid. By the time he’s able to react, he feels like throwing up as he drags Mike away from the stove top and watches the burns heal into bumpy scars. Suddenly he realizes how serious Mike must actually be, because he burned his fingertips. No prints. 

“You’re leaving with or without me, aren’t you?” he asks, staring down at the healed burns. “You wanna get as far away from here as possible.”

As much as Peter wants Mike to be safe and happy, this is extreme and he’s terrified of what could happen next. If they fail to escape, the repercussions could be severe. They don’t know how to make it on their own, anyway. And they’re still in high school. But he also understands how Mike can’t wait a day longer in this place. That all said, he can’t handle the idea of sending Mike out on his own. He’s naive, and sweet, and not experienced with what real people are like. It would be reckless. He pulls Mike into his arms and holds him close. All he can hear from Mike’s thoughts is hope for the first time in his life.

“Okay. Do you have everything on you that you need?” Peter asks. It may not be safe to let him back into that house. “All your money? The IDs? I have clothes if we need them.”

Mike nods. “I have for about a month. And my backpack has other stuff we might need. One of those foil blankets, and matches, and a refillable water bottle. I didn’t do anything in class today and I know that my Dad is gonna kill me when he gets home.”

Just like that, Mike’s thoughts turn to immediate plans. The first solid image Peter reads is his own hands on the burner, losing his prints. It would be much easier, he has to admit, but he’s still scared. Pain has never been something he handles with ease. Any last objections, he needs to raise now, before it’s too late. The cake ingredients are sitting on the counter, unmixed. Peter can stay here, and say he knew nothing, hide all clues about Mike from their families’ heads. 

He can’t. And he nudges Mike’s thoughts  with an okay. Smiles when Mike still looks up at him for permission. Every ounce of his willpower goes to not resisting when his hands are guided to the heat. He doesn’t feel it because Mike takes the pain for him, heals him, which is somehow worse. When they’re out on the streets, Peter will have to feel pain and Mike can’t always protect him from it.

“We’ll be okay,” Mike says, tilting Peter’s hand a little to make sure the full prints are gone. 


	2. Chapter 2

Peter does not bother to put away the ingredients for the cake they never wound up making. While Mike destroys their phones just in case anything incriminating may be left on them, Peter takes the big backpack his father used to use for camping and stuffs it with clothes, deodorant, toothbrushes, any essentials he can think of. He even searches at the bottom of one of his father’s dresser drawers for the wad of cash he knows is there. Everything they can get, they’ll need if they want to survive out there until they can get far away and find jobs. Happiness feels just around the bend.

According to the clock, their parents will be home in just under an hour, so they need to get far away, and fast. Without a car, their best bet is to get out of the residentials and into a busy area where they can disappear. If they’re lucky, find safety for the night at least. Any homeless shelter is out of the question because of the amount of people that will be searching for them. A motel would be far too expensive. They might just sit in a 24 hour fast food restaurant all night and catch up on sleep during the day, when it’s safer. 

He returns to the kitchen when he finishes packing to see Mike breaking his watch with the handle of one of the knives out of the block. He’s worn it so long, he has a tan line. The saddest part of this all, however, is that Peter doesn’t have to ask why. Since his father bought it for him, the likelihood of it having a tracker is near one hundred percent. 

“We can’t stay in the city more than a few days,” he points out, shielding himself from the shards of metal and glass with the backpack. “We’ll have to go somewhere else. Best bet is probably another big city so that we won’t get caught while we’re trying to figure out how to get back on our feet.”

Before he answers, Mike finishes destroying the watch and scrapes the pieces into the trash can with the dull side of the knife. “I know. We wait out the initial search, then we can get on a bus out of town. But I also want to know if maybe…”

He finishes in his head. Maybe there are more people like them, more people with powers. And maybe their fathers have information on who they might be. After all, one of the main things that made Mike start thinking of running away so long ago was the realization that the two of them had been made into this. All those shots as children, doctors’ appointments. They were becoming whatever they are now.

“There might be. But our safety comes first.”

Mike shrugs, his way of ending the conversation even if he disagrees. He picks up his backpack and gestures for Peter to do the same, because it’s time for them to get as far away as possible. With a large, deep, calming breath, he follows Mike out the back door. This is it for the well kept green grass and the iron rod fences that Peter boosts Mike up to so he can climb over them. The pass the backpacks through the bars, and then Peter just has to climb over it. Everything would be so much easier if he stayed where he is and let Mike run with their shared items. He could finish school. Go into baseball professionally. 

Then the hope and apprehension rolling off of MIke digs into him and he bites the inside of his cheek as he hauls himself up and over to the hum of a car pulling up in one of their driveways. Time is up.

Peter shoulders his pack, grabs Mike’s arm, and starts pulling him down the sidewalk on the other side of the house. When the street is empty, he drags him across and then they’re suddenly running so they can get out of the immediate area. Wind in Peter’s face, the chill of the afternoon settling in, and Mike breathing heavily beside him. The soles of their shoes slap against pavement. Laughter bubbles up in his chest because they’re not just running, they’re flying. 

All the way down four blocks, they finally duck into a library and bury themselves in stacks of books, all silence save for their heavy breathing. Mike reaches between them and takes his hand. As long as he can remember, Mike has had callouses, and new textures of burn scars are unfamiliar but expected at the same time. It feels like home.

“Do you think any of the books around here could give us clues about how we happened?” Mike asks.

Peter takes a moment to remember the last time he did research at a public library- never. Like most high schoolers, he does all of his research online. Right now, that might be more fruitful, but he can’t help thinking about the possibility of being tracked by their searches. Is that even possible? He may have just been watching too much TV. His dad has always said that he’s going to mix up reality and fiction eventually. 

“Not sure. Would that be in the medical section, or like, the magic/ghosts/monsters section?”

Immediately, he’s hit with a wave of irritation, like Mike believes he’s making fun of him. Just as quickly as it arrived, however, it’s gone again, and both of them understand the severity of the situation. They’re never going to be normal again. Now that they’ve run away, even more so. Computer it is, if they want a fighting chance at learning anything.

They leave the relative safety between the bookshelves to sit side by side at the public use computers. Mike is quiet, but his brain is loud with curiosities and worries and plans for the future. Idyllic visions of a house their own somewhere in the middle of nowhere, with flowers and dogs and a fireplace. How warm and safe they have the potential to be if the could only get away from here. 

Before long, all of it fades in favor of the text on some wikipedia article Mike found as the second result on google. So Peter turns his attention to his own computer to do some real research as well, not just snooping on Mike’s thoughts. He always feels guilty about it, but most of the time he can’t help it. Mike’s thoughts just float over Peter’s own, like waves lapping at the sand on the beach. 

Just as he’s opening the browser, an alert pops up on the corner of his screen, and Mike’s, and every one in their row. An amber alert. Dread in the pit of his stomach, he reads the text to find his and Mike’s full names, as well as saying they were last seen at their school.

He grabs onto Mike’s thoughts, plants the urge to run, and stands up from the computer. They can’t stay in here right now, even though no pictures have been released yet. It’s only a matter of time. Best thing to do is find somewhere with no cameras and no one willing to talk to the police. In other words, a neighborhood known for crime.

It’s not a good idea, really. The two of them are young, they have cash on them, and Mike is laughably naive when it comes to kind seeming strangers. Still, that might be the only way to avoid being dragged back home kicking and screaming. He drops the idea into Mike’s head without meaning to. It feels the same as thinking it himself, and he doesn’t realize what he’s done until Mike takes his hand and tells him to lead the way.


	3. Chapter 3

Somehow, the two of them make it to a shadier neighborhood before long, and it gets dark on them in the blink of an eye. Peter keeps his attention on the minds of everyone they encounter, steering Mike away from anyone who has so obviously poor intentions. Dealers, conmen, pimps, anyone who would be nice at first and lure Mike in. Not that Mike is stupid, or incapable of defending himself, but he tends to see the best in anyone nice to him.

The shops are all closed with bars pulled over them protectively, save for the 24 hour bodegas still covered in neon signs and cigarette ads, and each alleyway has smokers and men with paper bags in hand. Peter keeps Mike as close as possible, but he’s weary of being too touchy in case it provokes the people they’re around.

Mike hasn’t stopped thinking about the alert since it first popped up. Sometimes he’s scared, others confident. It fluctuates. And Peter respects that he at least narrowed it to those two, because he hasn’t figured out yet quite how he feels. Mike was obviously in danger, and needed to get away, But for Peter, it wasn’t a big deal. More than anything, an annoyance. The thought of going home doesn’t seem so bad when he’s facing a night on the streets with no covers to slip between and no door to lock if he feels unsafe from the things he hears during the night.

One of the corner stores seems to beckon Peter, although he isn’t sure why. He turns to Mike and pushes him against the cool brick wall, mindful that it isn’t too firm. “Stay here,” he whispers. “I’m going to get us food. Don’t talk to anyone. Don’t look at anyone. Okay?”

Both verbally and mentally, Mike agrees.

So Peter draws the hood of his jacket over his face and stuffs his hands into his pockets, crossing the street for food. He keeps a tenuous connection to Mike, just in case, but most of his focus turns to the cashier just in case. They should have something nutritious, but given their options, that would be an overreach. Two packages of cheap mini donuts catch his attention. It’s still real food while being fairly close to the cake they were forced to abandon. Chocolate has always been one of Mike’s favorites, which makes him smile to himself as he picks it up and brings their food to the counter. The fiver in his pocket should be enough, he thinks. Maybe an extra dollar, just in case.

He sets them on the counter and listens to the cashier. Bored, mostly. Thinking a bit about a recent ex who dumped him and whose body he still fantasizes about as he scans the plastic packaging and avoids eye contact with Peter. The total is $4.98 and as he hands over the cash, he suddenly feels overwhelming relief. That’s not right. The cashier isn’t feeling that, the cashier is annoyed that Peter hasn’t paid him. Which means it’s Mike.

Peter slams the money on the counter, puts the donuts in the pocket of his hoodie, and runs out of the bodega, searching for Mike. In his panic, it takes a moment for his eyes to land on him. He’s smiling, looks relaxed as a tall man in a beanie leans against the wall, caging Mike in a little.

The man’s thoughts are less than kind. He’s thinking about Mike’s stature, short and therefore not too intimidating. He’s thinking about the innocence rolling off Mike, the kind that a John would pay top dollar for. He’s thinking about how Mike will probably do anything, so desperate for positive attention.

All Mike is thinking about is how lucky he is that someone wants to get him a place to stay where he’s safe from his father.

“Mike,” Peter calls a little too loudly as he jogs up. “C’mon, let’s get going.” In Mike’s  mind, he adds that he said not to talk to anyone. 

In response, Mike’s thoughts flood with irritation. “This is Drew, he’s going to help us-”

“Mike-”

“He offered to put me up in a hotel for the night-”

The man, Drew, is sizing Peter up and mentally wondering if he would be worth it.

“Mikey-”

“And he can find us work, and-”

“Mike!”

When he raises his voice, Mike goes quiet and presses himself back against the wall. He doesn’t do well with yelling. There are more important things to think about right now, though, Peter tells himself to quell the guilt for later, because there’s a problem right now.

“This man isn’t trying to help you, he’s a pimp looking to sell you. Now, Drew, I suggest you get the fuck away from us right now.”

He doesn’t have a weapon, but he puts his hand in his pocket and wraps it around the package of donuts, which is enough to scare Drew away and leave the two of them alone. Mike is staring at Peter with wide eyes, and his head is full of memories of his father. And of a room Peter doesn’t recognize, with pictures that seem blurred, almost, like Mike is trying not to remember them.

“I didn’t mean to yell,” Peter says gently, reaching for Mike to try and soothe him. “But I got scared. I’m sorry, okay? Look, I um, I got you donuts. Chocolate. Your favorite.”

He holds them out, and waits a few long moments for Mike to take them and tug open the wrapping. The two of them both sink down to the concrete and sit on the sidewalk eating their cheap snacks that both of them think taste like sand because they’re thinking about what just happened. Through different views, of course, but it’s still overwhelming.

“We can’t do this by ourselves,” Mike says after a while. “I can’t expect you to take care of me, and we have nowhere to go. We need to find more people like us.”

“I know. But how?”

Images of the chest at the food of Dodds Sr’s bed pop into Mike’s mind. All important things are kept in there: birth certificates, medical records, report cards, anything that needs to be saved. Which means that if Mike’s father has any sort of information on people like them, it’s probably in that chest.

They need to find it, and any other information their fathers may have on how they were made. Which means checking the houses. And that won’t be easy, and there’s a very good chance of Mike freezing up. Peter can’t do this in good faith, but Mike has a point that they can’t do this on their own because neither of them are ready. Still, giving up isn’t an option for Mike. 

“I’ll check your father’s place, so you don’t have to,” he says. “You take mine. We’ll look tomorrow, when no one is home. Maybe we’ll find something?”

Mike nods and leans against Peter, a silent apology and forgiveness for the way the evening transpired. He’s thinking about how it would feel to kiss Peter, but the thought is clouded in guilt. Or maybe the guilt belongs to Peter, for listening in, but he can’t tell because he doesn’t mean to look, it just happens, and he hasn’t learned how to stop it yet.

“It’s okay, you know.”

“Hmm?” 

Peter just shakes his head dismissively, and tries to put it from his mind for the night. There are more important things than young love to worry about right now, something he never thought would occur to him when he had his first major crush at thirteen years old. Before he can even think about that, the two of them have to find out if there are more like them anywhere else in the world.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this is late, I've been sick!

The night is spent avoiding sleep on the sidewalk, debating the merits of going to a twenty four hour diner for coffee or staying where they were on the sidewalk. It’s hard to decide things like that when they both know what they’re going to have to do when the workday starts and the streets bustle with people going through their normal 9-5 jobs. Lucky them, living in their ordinary worlds.

Would Peter take the chance at such an ordinary life, if it was offered to him? Maybe if he had been given it from the beginning, he supposes, because as of now he can’t imagine not being able to read minds the way he does. It’s a part of him, just as much as the freckles on his cheeks and shoulders when he spends too much time outside in the summer. At times, it can be overwhelming, though. With the city bustling alive, he has trouble discerning his own thoughts from those around him, something distressing when it comes to the sorts of ideas and visions he would never think. On his first day of high school, he spent the whole lunch period throwing up while Mike rubbed his back because of all the things he heard.

Once, he heard the things Mike’s father thinks about, and that had been enough to have him reeling. He must’ve blocked the memory because he can’t for the life of him recall what he heard and saw. Still, he remembers the aftermath. First, he had passed out on Mike’s kitchen floor. Then he woke up in bed later that night. Mike was there, of course, holding damp washcloths to his head. A trashcan was next to his bed, already splattered with sick. And all Mike was thinking about was how worried be was for Peter, not how much trouble he must’ve been in from having Peter over without permission and now staying away from home when the sun has clearly already set. That night, Mike had told Peter he loved him and kissed him on the cheek because he didn’t know he was awake.

It doesn’t matter. Whatever Mike’s father was thinking had been horrific, and Peter absolutely does not want to return to that house and investigate the belongings of a man like him for clues about exactly how he abused his eldest son. After all, Mike’s brother is normal. Why not him? Why does it have to be the good natured, incredibly kind, and often shy Mike who would never dream of challenging an authority figure? Perhaps that’s why Dodds Sr. decided to use him. Or the trait may have been carefully cultivated to ensure that the living weapon wouldn’t question orders. Funny, it was Mike’s idea to run away in the first place.

“If my dad’s alarm goes off, the security code is- is my mother’s name,” Mike says, drawing Peter out of his wandering thoughts. “It’s-”

“Ingrid, I know. You know that what happened to her wasn’t your fault.”

“I could’ve saved her.”

Peter wants to argue, but can tell he would make no leeway and it isn’t worth the devastation when they’re already so vulnerable. He can feel Mike’s fear pricking down the back of his neck. Or maybe it’s his own. 

In the blink of an eye, Mike’s arms are around him. Just as quickly, they’re gone. Mike’s mind narrows down and he imagines a place for the two of them to meet after they’ve finished investigating, the bodega Peter bought donuts from the night before. Peter projects an affirmation and they turn away from one another, walking quickly with their heads down. The hood of Mike’s sweatshirt is pulled over his head, a good thing because of how recognizable he is. How many times has he appeared on TV, in interviews or at police functions, paraded around like an accessory since before he could understand what he was being used for. 

The walk home is grueling. While it takes less than an hour, it leaves Peter exhausted and with pain in his jaw from clenching it so hard the whole way. He knows his own house has nothing, he had searched it enough in the weeks leading up to this because Mike’s questions were starting to get to him. Now it’s time to go to a place he’s visited so rarely, one which Mike has always described as hell on Earth.

Something is off when he gets there. First, the front door is unlocked, which in of itself isn’t a big deal, but he knows it’s unlike Mike’s father not to double and triple check the locks before he leaves. He might still be home. But Peter has to go in, so he cautiously scans the house for thoughts, and finds it perfectly void. And yet, his heart pounds as he turns the knob, his damp palms slipping on the metal, his tennis shoes scuffing against the steps.

He pushes open the door and shuts it softly behind him as if there’s someone around to hear him. Like always, the house is spotless, not lived in, scarcely a home. There are no pictures of Mike or his brother on the walls. No trophies although Mike has won many.  No report cards on the fridge despite Mike’s perfect grades. It feels like walking in a model home devoid of dust or personal affects. Someone actually living here, let alone a family, seems impossible. A voice deep down tells him he should take off his shoes before tracking dirt on the pristine carpet. Funny enough, although Peter has been here before and his own house had the same layout, it feels like navigating a maze. Even the stairs feel wrong.

His very self is off as he climbs to the second level of the brownstone and stares at the three bedrooms. No sense looking in Mike’s. When he opens the door to Mike’s brother, Matt’s, bedroom, the only things in it is are a calendar with a picture of a race car on it, a mattress on the floor with a pillow and blanket, and a few shirts hung up beyond the ajar closet door. This isn’t right. 

Without further investigation, he steps out and turns his attention to the master bedroom- Mike’s father’s room. This one is locked, unlike the front door, but Peter can’t come this far and stop now. He throws his shoulder hard against the frame a couple times so it breaks, even though it leaves him with lingering pain. 

Peter practically falls into the room once the door cracks open. At first, everything seems normal. A bed, a dresser with a mirror, a desk with neatly organized stationary. Then his eyes land on a couple of key details: the file folder on the corner of the dresser, and the chest at the foot of the bed.

He goes for the folder first because it’s easier to access. As if the bad feeling wasn’t intense enough, when he lifts it up, pictures come tumbling out, and the second he looks at them he wished he hadn’t. Each image is horrific. Photographs of blood and mutilation and violence that have Peter reeling back because it’s like he can taste the pain radiating off of them. It takes every single ounce of his willpower not to throw up as he gathers them back into the folder and puts it where it belongs. He’ll have to ask Mike if he knows anything about those.

Now he has to look at the trunk. After seeing those pictures, he’s terrified by the thought of what he might find in things not just left out in plain sight. Peter drops to his knees and starts messing with the lock. It’s combination, and old, but there are infinite possibilities. Could Mike’s father have chosen it, or would it be random? Should he search for some bolt cutters or something?

As he’s struggling to come up with an idea, the door opens downstairs and he’s bombarded with heavy thoughts from two loud and domineering people. People like Mike’s father. Shit. It takes him seconds to actually identify William Dodds as one of them, and that he doesn’t know the other, and about ten more seconds to realize he should hide. 

Peter quickly chooses the closet, the quickest and quietest place to hide where he won’t be immediately visible, and starts trying to barricade his own thoughts so he doesn’t accidentally project. Not like he’s ever been able to successfully do that, of course, but now’s the time to try his best. Especially when footsteps start pounding up the stairs.


	5. Chapter 5

In spite of Peter’s frantic mental begging, the thoughts find their way into the bedroom, followed by comparatively quiet speech. He has to focus hard to tell the difference. Verbally, they’re on about how Mike and Peter are both missing. It’s not with worry, though, more anger. Like something valuable was stolen, not a child lost. He’s angry and just barely able to contain it.

“It’s not the end of the world,” the stranger says. “They don’t understand themselves enough to pose any real danger, and I have other subjects.”

Mike’s father makes a sound like a snort. “Yeah, and how many of them have you kept track of? Sunshine disappeared almost ten years ago, and you still haven’t found him. And I’ll remind you, my son isn’t just an experiment.”

For a moment, Peter thinks Mike’s father might admit some modicum of humanity. Even the briefest mention of attachment to a child he has raised since birth, has spent so much time trying to control. Maybe he was doing it for the right reasons, even if his methods were horrible. 

“I have put years into making sure he’s the perfect replacement, the perfect puppet. I don’t care if you don’t need him,  _ I _ need him.”

That makes sense, and Peter can’t tell if that’s better or worse than Mike’s father having had some sort of good intentions for everything he’s done.

“Well, I’m sure you will. Michael has absolutely no ability to survive on his own. He’s naive and scares easy and before long, he’ll be crawling back. Even with Peter to help, they can’t do this for very long.”

At that, Peter can’t help trying to peer into the stranger’s thoughts. How does he know the two of them? Who is he? He hopes for answers, and is startled to find the stranger’s thoughts neatly organized like a mental filing cabinet, so unlike most people. It doesn’t make sense. He feels a gentle nudge back and pauses, afraid he’s been caught. But it fades, and he withdraws his focus with his heart beating out of his chest.

Then he listens to Mike’s father’s thoughts. Memories of the kind of pain he put Mike through, annoyance at the disobedience, a looming threat of intense punishment when he has Mike again. Peter can’t control himself this time. He’s angry, and ranting, and without meaning to, it flows out of him in a tidal wave he can’t control. By the time he realizes he’s projecting, it’s too late, and Mike’s father knows that Peter is nearby.

He’s screwed, and tries to pull his thoughts back in even as he’s hoping that no one checks the closet, which is entirely counter productive because he can’t stop projecting and winds up leading Mike’s father directly to the closet. Peter’s blinded when the door flies open. Without a moment’s reprieve, he’s dragged from the closet and thrown down on the floor to look at Mike’s father and a man naggingly familiar in the back of his mind.

“Peter,” the man says, crouching beside him and giving him an analytical, almost kind look. “I take it those were your thoughts?”

“Leave me alone.”

He needs to get up and run, but he doesn’t know if he’d be able to escape and his limbs feel too heavy to move. Nothing feels like it’s working right. There’s a nagging presence in the back of his head that he can’t identify, and the more he focuses on it, the more intense it gets. Within a few moments, it’s so oppressive and heavy that he can’t think at all. Something is really, really wrong, and he can’t pinpoint it but he can’t even lift his face off the carpet anymore.

Above him, Mike’s father and the strange man are talking, but he can’t make out the words. It’s like he’s a mile underwater and they’re mumbling above the surface. He tries to identify the words, but the second he does, it feels like his head is being squeezed in a beartrap and he gives up. Just like that, the pressure eases. He doesn’t understand what’s happening or why.

After what feels like hours, he’s hauled up by one arm and dragged out of the room, toward the hall closet. He faintly recognizes that Mike has always been terrified of this closet. Nothing good could possibly on the other side of the innocuous white door. His mild curiosity doesn’t have time to dwell, because he’s shoved roughly into it and locked in the closet. He fumbles along the walls for a lightswitch.

The second the lights are on, he regrets it.

Every inch of the walls are papered with the same grotesque photos Peter had found in the bedroom. Blood. Gore. Dead bodies. Mutilated faces. Everywhere he turns, there’s something else horrible he can’t escape and he starts screaming because he can’t help it. They feel like they’re penetrating his very mind and he can’t escape them even when he turns the light off and squeezes his eyes shut. He can almost feel the pain of each image.

Faintly on the other side of the door, he can still hear Mike’s father and the stranger plotting something to get Mike here, but he can’t really focus on anything except his surroundings. The images aren’t visible, but he can feel them. Their pain. 

And somehow, from all that, he feels like he exists outside of himself. His body is separate from himself, and he’s following behind Mike’s father and the stranger as they start drafting a statement to release, one which may bring Mike back here, entrap him just the way Peter has been. 

There’s nothing he can do to stop them when they put out an alert that Peter has been arrested for breaking and entering the Dodds residence, and Mike is suspected to be armed and dangerous. He isn’t, but the point isn’t to find Mike anymore. They’re going to draw Mike here to search for Peter, saving them the trouble and meaning they’ll be able to control him. Through and through, Mike has always tried to be a protector, and with Peter trapped here, they can use him as leverage. 

His thoughts drift back toward Sunshine in an effort to stop thinking about the pictures surrounding him. The stranger had said there are more people out their like him and Mike, more supposed test subjects, including one who has successfully gone off the grid: Sunshine. He doubts that Sunshine is their real name, but it could be a nickname, or a clue to their powers. If he and Mike manage to completely escape, they should track down this sunshine, try to befriend them, find all of the other “subjects” like them who’ve been experimented on.

It’s hard to tell how long Peter is trapped, but it feels like a couple hours before he hears footsteps approaching the closet again. He sits up hurriedly to pound against the door, although he doesn’t get a chance before it  swings open and he’s free. The stranger stands over him, smiling again, but free from the suffocating pain of the closet he can start seeking out everyone’s thoughts with his mind.

He doesn’t bother to try the stranger again, but when he searches the house he finds Mike’s father, and of course, Mike. Mike’s thoughts are all over the place, filling the entire bottom floor of the house. They’re panicked. Peter tries to project that he’s okay, that Mike needs to leave while he can, but all he gets in response is more fear and an echo of whatever Mike’s father must be saying to him.

“Come with me,” the man says, grabbing Peter’s arm and leading him downstairs to where Mike and his father are sitting in the living room, both stiff, but with completely different reasons and lines of thought. “You did the right thing coming to us, Peter.”

Mike looks up at Peter immediately with wide eyes. 

“No, I didn’t- you know that’s not what I did-”

“You’re such a good kid for helping us make sure Mike is safe,” Mike’s father says.

Betrayal consumes the room, hurt, pain, at the thought that Peter planned this and was never really going to help him. He tries so hard to project that they’re lying, which only leads to  headache and a sense of pressure at his temples.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry this is a shorter chapter!
> 
> Also Note: Finding Our Home will be split into parts consisting of ten chapters, the first of which is Leaving Our Home from Peter's point of view. Tags have been updated to reflect!

Once Mike and Peter are both in the living room, everything happens far too quickly. They’re allowed to sit next to each other, but Mike is ignoring him no matter how many times he says that he didn’t betray him. It’s painful that Mike even believes he would. In any other circumstances Peter would be angry about it and they’d argue, but now isn’t the time, because things aren't just going to go back to normal. They ran away. It doesn’t matter how little time that lasted because they’ve now shown they won’t be easy to control.

“Luckily for you both,” the stranger says, “you’re going somewhere you won’t be able to hurt yourselves or anyone else. In fact, it’s a safe environment for you to learn how to harness your powers and use them for good.”

For good is a relative term. They’ll be taught how to aid Mike’s father and the police, how to torture people, how to become good little broken down soldiers like he’s tried to turn Mike into since the day he was born. Wherever they’re going to go, whatever they’re going to do, it won’t be pleasant. Peter tries again to look into the stranger and Mike’s father’s minds, but receives the same painful rebuff.

All he can read are Mike’s thoughts, which spill around him and permeate his brain so he can’t ignore them, can barely distinguish them from his own when they’re so pressing and intense. Mostly, it’s fear. That’s understandable. But there’s also determination, the beginning of a plan with intent brewing behind it. Mike may have a way to get the two of them out of here, because for once, Peter feels completely useless. He’s about to try and figure out the plan when Mike launches into it.

Mike’s father reaches to put a hand on his shoulder, and then he’s on his knees, gritting his teeth as Mike holds his arm tightly. No matter how much he tries to escape, Mike has a good grip on him, and he seems to be in an incredible amount of pain. Before Peter’s very eyes, bruises start spreading outward from Mike’s hand, expanding like butter melting over a hot biscuit. The room is overpowered with Mike’s thoughts, which just boil down into the desire to hurt. He wants his father to feel the pain he has. Peter’s actually afraid of him.

He’s about to say something, but then the worst pain of his life rips through his back and he sinks to the floor. None of his limbs seem to be working. All he can do is lay there, tears on his cheeks, something warm and wet spreading around him.

“Michael,” the stranger says behind Peter, “if you want him to live, you’re going to have to come over here and save him.”

Oh. That’s what this feeling is. He’s dying. He’s thought about what it would feel like to die, and it’s not like this. But he can’t do anything about it, and just stares at the carpet in front of his eyes. There’s red creeping toward him, his own blood, possibly. He’s going to pass out any second, or maybe it’s death lingering in his peripheral vision.

Next thing he knows, Mike’s hand is on his back and he feels the pain leaching out of him. In moments he feels good as new, which means Mike healed him, took his pain. When he sits up, it’s to see Mike at his side, seemingly out cold. At least his chest is still rising and falling, if a bit too quickly to be safe. He’s alive. Then the man lifts Mike up like a ragdoll and puts him on the couch. Peter reaches for him to comfort him, but instead receives a kick in the stomach to settle him down.

“I’ll call the truck,” Mike’s father says, rubbing his arm as he gets to his feet. His entire bicep is dark with burst blood vessels and looks a bit swollen. Serves him right. “How long until I’ll get my son back when this is over?”

They really are going to be sent away. There’s nothing they can do to save themselves, and Mike is out cold, and all he can think about now is how awful things are going to be. Wherever they’re going can’t be good, if it’s what Mike’s father wants from them. Peter can’t breathe at the thought, but there’s nothing he can do. When the rumble of a car in the driveway arrives, the thought of getting in it appears in his brain and he’s suddenly doing it, no matter how much he wants to fight back or run far away. 

Outside, the truck isn’t much. It’s a horse trailer, with a flap of canvas covering the part where a horse would stick out it’s head. He and Mike will be in here, knocked around in the metal box with poor ventilation and nothing to protect them from harsh turns or the heat of the sun. And it definitely doesn’t help that Mike is still unconscious, still unable to fight back as he’s carried to the truck alongside Peter and out inside without any care for his safety.

“This is good for you,” Mike’s father says, still rubbing his injured arm. “You’ll learn how to control yourself in a safe environment, Peter. And you won’t keep getting Mike into trouble.”

“Fuck you.”

In response, Mike’s father slams the trailer door shut, leaving Peter in near complete darkness, feeling around the room for Mike. The least he can do is make sure Mike’s head doesn’t slam into the walls or the floor, hurt him worse than he already is from saving Peter’s life. There’s no telling what will happen to them when they get where they’re going, or if they’ll survive it.

“I’ve got you,” Peter tells Mike, running his fingers through his greasy hair. “We’re going to be okay. I promise, I won’t let anything happen to you.”


	7. Chapter 7

It feels like hours before the truck stops and the door of the trailer swings open to more strangers in crisp uniforms with guns at their sides. This very well may be a prison. Peter tries instinctively to examine their minds, but like the stranger at Mike’s house, he’s unable to do much. They’re guarded. He can’t figure out what they’re thinking and use it to his advantage. Thankfully, however, they seem unable to throw him violently back into himself the way the stranger did. 

But they are physically much stronger than him, and easily drag him along by his arms, a pair of them pulling a still unconscious Mike out too. Peter’s worried about him and soothed only by spending the whole ride with his fingers to his wrist in search of a pulse. He doesn’t bother to fight, not right now, as he’s brought into an austere building and taken in the opposite direction from Mike, through echoing blank hallways with some doors locked tightly.

The one he eventually winds up in is small, with sterile linoleum floors and eggshell walls illuminated by a single overhead fluorescent light. And in the corner, a shackled young man stares at Peter with a cruel twist to his mouth and rage in his eyes. Before anyone says anything, he’s fairly sure of what they want him to do. Investigate this man’s thoughts, get a confession or something.

“Hurt him,” one of the guards says suddenly, which is not what Peter expected. “Torture him.”

“What? No!”

That same guard swats Peter’s back with his baton, forcing him to double over and struggle to breathe. They don’t repeat the command, but it’s expected he comply this time. How would he even torture this man? He doesn’t have any weapons, he’s definitely not good at hurting people even if he wanted to, and as much as this man gives him the creeps Peter does not have the right to hurt him just because he’s been told to.

“I can’t!”

Once again a baton slams into his back and this time he falls with a scream, instinctively grabbing his head to protect it as a steel toed boot finds its mark in his stomach. He has the urge to throw up. Instead, he looks at the prisoner again, who just stares back. Peter needs a sign, some sort of sign, that this man is truly innocent. That’s all he needs to hold his ground in a desperate effort to put good back into this world. But instead, the prisoner sneers at him for his obvious weakness, and Peter decides he needs to take care of himself first and foremost.

“Project, Stone. Hurt him.”

Even though he’s never projected any kind of pain, certainly not on purpose, Peter knows it’s himself or the prisoner. So he shuts his eyes, takes a deep breath, and focuses on how much it hurt to have been nearly killed earlier today. The burning sensation, the helplessness, the fear, the overwhelming pain. He gives a mental push.

Just like that, the prisoner screams and curls in on himself, begging for it to stop, stop, go away, please, and Peter jerks back into himself in an effort to put an end to the clear distress. This man seems to have experienced what he did tenfold. Having this amount of power at his disposal, so obviously going to be exploited in the name of what Mike’s father considers good, is terrifying. He’s afraid of himself. But at the same time, he feels so beyond powerful because this means he isn’t defenseless. Peter can’t just look into people’s thoughts, can’t just throw occasional images of his own in, he can hurt them. Badly.

This may be the key he needs to escape, and is it really that bad if he’s complacent for a time in an effort to learn how to really defend himself? If he can’t do it physically, like Mike can, why not use any tool at his disposal? Yes, he knows he shouldn’t give in so easily, but he didn’t realize how little potential he had unlocked until there’s more in front of him. He craves being able to use his abilities to the fullest extent.

When the guards praise him and lead him away, bringing him to a similar room with a single piece of furniture, a bed, in it. His new home, he supposes, until he understands himself and can bust out of here with Mike at his side. Freedom is within reach, even if it means biding his time until they’re no longer so concerned with his desire to escape. 

His door, locked from the outside, has a small doggy door like rectangle at the bottom through which he is fed, and every day he is allowed out twice for hygienic needs and an additional time for the training they impose on him so he may learn to follow orders about how to use his powers. He never once sees another person with powers, just the same guards with their orderly minds who ignore him when he asks about Mike.

But as he suspected, they forget that they have been teaching him to become a powerful force not to be messed with. They cannot contain him forever. It starts with hurting people, then they teach him to control others, then he’s doing it to up to ten people at a time. He becomes unstoppable by the time he decides he’s strong enough to get out and take Mike with him.

It starts with demanding information. He asks them about Mike, and when they don’t answer, bombards them with the same treatment they’ve forced him to give to prisoners he stopped pondering the innocence of long ago. That part of him is gone, he decides, because they wanted a weapon and now they’ve got one. One guard in particular, the weakest of them all, begins to volunteer information written on little sticky notes Peter tears to pieces and hides under his mattress after he reads them. Just snippets, things that no one would think might help him set the both of them free.

_ Dodds received a meal today. _

_ Dodds successfully killed a man today. _

_ Dodds was punished for disobedience today. _

But once the guard starts giving in, Peter knows they will not be able to suddenly return to the level of pain everyone has become well aware of his ability to inflict. So he pushes more and more, for more information, and eventually, to be taken to see Mike. He can’t estimate how long they’ve been here, but it feels like years on end. He marks time by how many training sessions he’s had, which gives him a messy estimate of around four months. Four months of becoming little more than a glorified sword. He doesn’t mind it anymore, because he knows he’s on his way to freedom and everything will be okay.

When he’s taken to see Mike, he finds himself surprisingly empty. There is no relief, no anger, no excitement. Just a burning apathy curling in his chest as he stares at a form curled up on the floor of a barred cell like one might expect at an old fashioned prison. Bruises and scrapes cover Mike’s body, and he looks as though he’s not had a proper shower since they were abducted. And somehow, Peter feels nothing. That should frighten him, but he’s incapable of having emotions about his sudden lack of them.

Instead he watches until Mike seems to realize he’s being watched and sits up to stare at Peter, lips moving soundlessly around half formed words. Peter checks his thoughts and finds them full of nothing but pain, sharp and angry pain, and it’s that which suddenly snaps him back to the realization that they need to leave.

_ Open his cell _ , he orders the guard, and they comply without hesitation. 

They’re going to escape right now.


	8. Chapter 8

The second Mike is no longer stuck behind the bars, he’s stumbling forward to grab onto Peter and mentally beg to leave, to escape what has been nothing but a veritable hell for him. This should be easy to understand, given that Peter has been here too, but all he feels is the faint nagging anxiety about remaining where they are at the moment.

“We’re going to be okay,” he says, frightening even himself at the lack of intonation in his voice. He’s become robotic. He is nothing. “Stand up. We’re leaving.”

As Mike struggles to his feet, Peter focuses back in on the guard and demands to be taken to an exit, glad that all his time learning to break people has taught him to bypass their mental blocks they’ve had since day one in an effort to protect themselves from him. Joke’s on all of them, because all they’ve done is made sure he can destroy anything they put in his path. They’re the ones who chose to turn him into a weapon. They will deal with the consequences.

But of course, because of the type of place they’ve been sent, people are alerted Mike has been let out beyond the limits of his schedule. Everything is a schedule here, Peter has noticed, so of course someone would notice that something has changed. Stupid, stupid, fucking stupid for not realizing this until they get to the exit and there’s a cluster of armed guards waiting for them, ready to force them back into their prisons and continue to turn them into soldiers for a cause they don’t support.

“Let us leave,” he orders, hoping they are frightened enough of him not to put up a fight.

No such luck.

He looks to Mike, and realizes that he’s in no shape to get them out of this either, unsteady on his feet and faraway in his eyes and looking like he wants more than anything to sink into the Earth and never breathe fresh air again on the outside of this stale hell.

“Stone, just go back to your room. You’ve been making such good progress, it would be a shame to throw it away.”

It’s impossible not to notice that they appeal to him, not to Mike. They don’t even seem to acknowledge that he would care about what becomes of Mike if they stay here much longer. He gets the sickening feeling that he wouldn’t survive much longer.

So Peter does all he knows how to do, and reaches out to their minds. Protected, of course, but that’s not going to stop him because he’s tired of being ordered around and told what to do and like always, he’s going to take care of Mike. Someone has to, after all. He has to close his eyes in concentration to get through to all of them and try his best to skirt around Mike’s loosely drifting, easily manipulated thoughts. It’s more difficult to avoid him than break into the others, he thinks, but that doesn’t stop him from doing everything in his power to spare Mike from what he’s about to do.

He focuses hard on every single pain he’s been through. When his powers made him sick at school, when he was trapped with those awful pictures at Mike’s house, when he was stabbed, when he was beaten into submission with that baton. All of it at once, stacked together and inescapable, and he projects all of it to every mind he’s sunk his claws into. The reaction is immediate. Screaming, pleading, the clatter of weapons being dropped in the guards’ desperation to do something, anything to make this go away. But it doesn’t go away because nothing is ever that easy. All that they can do is collapse on the ground, making way for an escape.

Peter turns to Mike and sees him just as incapacitated, tears streaming down his cheeks. He tries to pull away from the soft expanse of Mike’s thoughts but it’s too late. The damage has been done. Later, the guilt will consume him- should he remember how to feel- but right now he just loops an arm around Mike’s waist to pull him toward the exit. 

Would Mike’s father, or the stranger with him, be proud to know how easily Peter managed to take down so many people? Anything they would see as a success is not something he wants to come anywhere close to doing because that means it’s wrong, he’s wrong, and he needs to rethink his approach to this whole thing. He files the information away to deal with later as he drags Mike out into the sunlight he hasn’t felt in what seems like years. It’s blinding at first, but in the best kind of way. They are liberated, and he can breathe deeply for the very first time since Mike came to him with the idea of running away from all of this.

They can’t get far on foot, so he leaves Mike just long enough to run back into the building and steal the car keys from a still crippled guard. By the time he comes back, Mike is seconds from fainting and Peter hurries to steady him. He presses the lock button on the keys and follows the loud sound and flash of lights. While he hadn’t gotten his license before they ran away, he had his permit, and that will have to do.

“We’re going to be okay,” he tells Mike as he lays him across the back seat. He’s really hurt, and doesn’t seem to have been healing himself. “I promise.”

Then Peter vaults into the front seat and starts the engine because they don’t have much time before they’re followed. He doesn’t know where they are, or where they’re going, but they’re escaping. The road stretches before him, empty, and for miles he watches it in silence before thinking to turn on the radio because he’s missed music, really. While he was being trained, he wasn’t allowed to have music.

He doesn’t recognize the song that comes in static bursts, but it doesn’t matter because it’s music and no one is here to take it away from him. He lets them go fast, faster, until there’s a sign for a fuel stop along the highway and he hurries to the exit. When they get there, they need to ditch this car, get first aid supplies, and find a way to get to a new city where no one can find them. It’s made more difficult by not knowing exactly where he is, but Peter can handle this.

When he pulls into the gas station, the first thing he does it check on Mike in the back seat. He seems conscious, but he’s still out of it and frightened and in pain, a great deal of which is Peter’s fault. That should make him feel guilty, but instead, Peter feels mildly annoyed at the complication. He shouldn’t feel that. Not that it matters, because he doesn’t feel anything for long before his head snaps to the dire situation in front of them.

Peter feels out the gas station and finds a mailman in the convenience store, on his way to a nearby small town with a package for a woman who’s a bit odd but very caring. Perfect. He shoves the order to get first aid supplies into the mailman’s head, and when he returns, makes him feel compelled to offer a ride to two scraggly teenagers sitting in the backseat of a shitty car from the early two thousands.

After that, everything is so fast. Peter sits in the passenger seat of the truck, and Mike is in his lap curled up in a way that can’t be comfortable. No one speaks a word the whole three hour ride, not even Mike, although there are a million questions moving too quickly for Peter discern in his thoughts. In a couple hours, or a couple seconds, they’re pulling up in front of an old looking mint green house with dirt splattered up the walls and a beat up truck in the driveway. He checks the house and finds the thoughts of a gentle woman, and impresses upon her that she’s expecting visitors who will need her help.

Later, much later, he imagines he’ll feel guilty. But for now, it’s just about survival. 


	9. Chapter 9

The woman who comes to the front door to receive her package and guests, Peter gives a deeper probe into her mind. She seems friendly, genuine, but somehow wise. He gets the feeling she knows why they’re here even though he knows he didn’t tell her. This is suspicious. He should find somewhere else for him and Mike to stay, but he knows that right now, Mike needs to recover, not be rushed around in search of somewhere one hundred percent safe. Such a place doesn’t exist.

_ Peter and Mike _ , he tells her mentally, and she physically nods with a smile.

“Come on in boys, I’ll make you something to eat.”

Peter helps Mike inside and eases him onto the soft looking couch, doing everything in his power to forget how much they’ve been through to get to this point. Freedom is a couch older than Peter, a television set just as ancient, and the smell of canned tomato soup heating up on the stove. He has fuzzily fond memories of lying sick in bed as a small child when his mother brought him tomato soup. She made it from scratch every day until she disappeared. His father tried, heating up the contents of old Campbell’s but it wasn’t the same. Nothing was the same after she decided she didn’t care about her broken family anymore.

“It’s good for the soul,” the woman announces, like she can hear what he’s thinking, when she comes back into the room with two bowls a few moments later. “Nothing better than warm soup to fill your soul.”

She reminds Peter of the sweet grandmas on television. The crows feet by her eyes crinkle in a smile as she feeds spoonfuls to Mike so he doesn’t spill, giving Peter the freedom to scarf it down like a starving man. Sure, they fed him, but it wasn’t nearly enough. 

“He’ll be better in three weeks,” she says knowingly. “In the meanwhile, you boys can stay here. No one bothers me.”

“Ma’am, how would you-”

“I know a lot of things,” she answers wisely. 

He isn’t sure if he trusts her, but it certainly feels nice to know that he and Mike are safe from their parents for the time being. They do appear to be in the middle of nowhere, after all, and if there’s an issue, Peter can protect them. It’s his job to make sure Mike is okay, always.

“Do you have a computer I can use?”

The woman points to an antiquated box. Better than nothing. Still buzzing in the back of his mind is what Mike’s father and the strange man had said. Sunshine. More. Peter and Mike aren’t alone in what’s been done to them, and if they can find others, maybe they can all get to safety. Where there’s community, there’s hope, and that’s really all either of them can ask for at this point.

Once he sits at the computer and pulls up the slowly loading internet browser, he hears the woman talking to Mike in a gentle voice and explaining things as she does them. She’s bandaging him up, cleaning out his wounds, applying ice to a bruise on his face. All the matronly things no one has ever done for Mike, partly because he heals himself, and partly because no one cares. Peter should’ve done those things, should’ve taken care of him. Once again, he gets the impression, he should feel guilty, but instead all he feels is more of that all consuming apathy. They broke him, in that place, and he doesn’t know how to feel again.

His first Google search is pathetic. Turns out there are billions of results when one simply puts the word “sunshine” into the search bar. But then he starts looking for any indication of powers, of something out of the ordinary. He winds up on a wiccan site, which feels a bit odd. How strange it must be, for someone to believe in forces they can’t see. Simple things, like putting a special rock on your desk will heal you. Maybe he should try it, or talk to one of them, to see if they can fix him. He needs the fixing, he thinks.

As he scrolls the forums, he comes across a couple reports of what the women on the forum think are the results of witchcraft. In some rural town in the midwest, there’s all these articles about a kid who grows the biggest vegetables, the sweetest berries, the most beautiful flowers. Just the result of some magic, they say, but Peter has the feeling this is more.

He finds one of the source articles and starts reading. Boring shit about the start of a vegetable garden at the town high school, and what types of seeds they planted. It’s unimportant until he gets to the part about the kid who came up with the idea.

“Known for his record sized vegetables…” Peter reads aloud. Just like the forum mentioned. “Sonny.”

The last name is redacted because he’s a minor, but the dots connect well enough. Sonny. Sunshine. Peter’s willing to bet they’re the same person. At the very least, it’s worth looking into, he thinks. If Sonny has powers, they find him, and that’s incredible. If he doesn’t, at least Mike and Peter will have been on the move and thus harder to be found and returned to their parents. No downside, none at all. 

He bookmarks the page and closes it down for now, so he can go back to looking after Mike as he always has. He may have been broken down and weaponized, but the one thing he can do is take care of Mike. Peter reaches out to him to check his thoughts, and finds Mike tired, at ease, not in pain anymore. In all honesty, he doesn’t think he’s ever felt him so relaxed. There’s always been at least a modicum of fear or anxiety, but now, he’s resting, truly.

The woman’s thoughts are still orderly, still positive, still slightly strange feeling. At the very least, she isn’t a threat. Peter feels the tension slip from his shoulders as he comes back to the couch to see Mike wrapped up in a soft blanket, playing with his fingers. 

“Mikey? Feeling better?”

Mike nods and Peter watches his black eye lighten a bit before stopping. “Hurts.”

“Yeah.”

When Peter reaches for his hand, Mike flinches away and curls his fingers into his palms tightly. He wants to ask what was done to him at their fun little camp, but he gets the feeling Mike isn’t ready to talk about it, and delving into his mind for answers feels wrong. He tries to give Mike privacy as much as he can.

Maybe once they find more like them, they’ll be able to heal.


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'M SO SORRY I FORGOT TO POST THE LAST CHAPTER ITS BEEN DONE FOR AGES OGTJKVIURH HERE IT IS

After a week, Peter starts to get restless. Just sitting around isn’t right anymore, not after coming out of near constant training and practice. He wouldn’t dare to practice on Mike or the sweet woman looking after him. She hasn’t told them her name, and they haven’t asked. No point getting attached, because as soon as they can, they’re going to leave to find others like them. Besides, even if he wanted to, Peter is fairly unsure he’s lost the ability to form connections anymore. People aren’t people, they’re things, except for Mike. Mike is someone special, and Peter wants- needs- to protect him more than anything. It’s all he’s good for anymore, because there’s no need to be a weapon in the middle of nowhere while they lazily recuperate.

He takes to tending the property, so he can do something with himself. He weeds the overgrown garden, waters the scraggly grass, hoses down the grimy sides of the house. It’s exhausting, but he doesn’t care. Peter can’t just sit around, not anymore. It gives him the worst kind of itch under his skin, one that he can’t scratch unless he walks all the way into town and spends a couple hours listening to people, sometimes controlling them with a light hand. Easy things, like making them check their phone. It’s stupid, and he feels guilty, but without it he wants to crawl out of his fucking skin.

For some reason, he still hasn’t remembered how to feel. Everything, even Mike’s screams in the middle of the night, fails to draw any response beyond measured apathy from the depths of his ribcage. He still sits beside Mike’s makeshift bed on the couch and pushes his hair out of his face until Mike relaxes, he still kisses his temple every morning and night, he still sits with him and helps him heal himself slowly every day. But the meaning behind it is gone.

The woman seems to understand. She tells Peter at least five times a day that she’s proud of him and things will get better. Most mornings she helps him bandage his arms because injuries seem to appear in his desperate attempts to feel something, anything. Anything other than this hell.

But all the same, Peter keeps tracking down Sunshine, following several leads until he’s certain that the first one he found on the witchcraft forum is his best bet. He still can’t find a photo of the boy’s face, but he does come across more news articles from the small town that all mention the same boy. Sonny Carisi. One would think that the prospect of finding him would excite Peter, but it doesn’t.

“You don’t have to leave,” the woman says to him on a heavy early spring day, too warm for the beginning of the season. “You boys can stay here. There’s a lovely school in town, and I can make you up someplace to sleep, and teach you how to cook…”

It seems so nice. To stay, to relax, to breathe easy every night and know there isn’t any more running to do. But Peter knows they can’t, and that Mike needs to find more like them, find people who understand. It’s important to him. The most important thing to him now, probably, because all he does nowadays is sit lifelessly and stare into the distance, refusing to let Peter touch him. His eyes only snap from their hazy distance when Peter gives him more information about the man- boy, really- that they’re going to hunt down the same way Mike’s father hunted them what feels like an eternity ago. Peter is a predator, a wolf, because he has forgotten how to be a deer. 

And so Peter refuses to stay, and finds himself stripping the junk drawer in the kitchen until he comes across an old car key. Late at night, he sneaks out and drives the truck. He cleans it during the day while he tends the garden, too, because then he knows they have a way out.

He doesn’t tell Mike when they’re leaving.

The woman seems to sense something is different that day, but does not argue. She gifts the two of them with old clothes that smell like cigarettes but have been worn soft by someone with broader shoulders than Mike. She gives him a carabiner for clipping keys to his belt even though the only one he has is for the car, and he didn’t think she knew that. Perhaps she gives them these things because she knows they probably can’t get too far when they have no money and no ID. Who cares, Peter thinks, because he can just use his powers to get whatever he wants anyways. Isn’t that what they wanted from him?

On their last night, once the woman and Mike are asleep, Peter quietly puts their things in the tiny back seat of the pickup, steals a bottle of painkillers from the medicine cabinet, and scoops Mike up in his arms to put him in the truck. He keeps a gentle hold on his mind so sleep remains oppressive over Mike’s body until it’s too late for him to disagree because he’s decided to stay. Not that Peter necessarily thinks he will, but he doesn’t want to deal with the possibility right now. All they need to do is go. 

For the first couple hours, until they need to find a gas station, Peter keeps Mike asleep with a nudge to his mind. He’s not proud of it, but it’s for the best right now, when Mike is still so scared and jumpy from the internment of being turned into deadly weapons.

Mike wakes up while Peter’s getting a random trucker to pay for their gas and starts banging on the window of the truck. His mind fills with terror, incomparable terror, and Peter immediately rushes to him, practically ripping the door off the car in his haste. Doubled over, sobbing, Mike falls from his seat and Peter barely manages to catch him before he can tumble onto the asphalt. 

“Hey, hey, you’re okay-”

“Don’t touch me!”

He scrambles away from Peter with his hands up. There are tears streaming down his cheeks. Peter checks his mind and finds the same fear, accompanied with hazy memories which get pushed down deep before he can fully inspect them. It seems their training has turned Peter to stone and Mike to glass.

“Get back in, we’re looking for Sonny. I’ll go get us some food.”

Even though Peter doesn’t think he controls Mike to make him do it, there’s something robotic to the obedience before he allows himself to walk into the gas station to steal some water and unhealthy snack food. The cashier doesn’t even look at him, so Peter doesn’t have to force him to ignore the thievery.

He wonders for a moment if he should rob the place. He could. It would be so easy.

Instead, he goes back to the car, closes the gas cap, and begins driving them down the dark roads once more, in search of something to give them hope.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading, don't forget to tell me what you think! And it would be really cool if you could reblog these chapters on my tumblr, @lesbiancarisi, where I also take requests and frequently post content!


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